ATDTDA (2): hootenanny (part 1)

[Tim Strzechowski]

"Guess you can hear that whole hootenanny from where you are," Foley went on (p. 31).


hootenanny (HOOT-nan-ee) noun

   1. An informal performance by folk singers, often involving the audience.

   2. A thingamajig: an unidentified or unnamed object or gadget.

[Of unknown origin. Earlier a hootenanny implied a thingamajig; eventually the term took its new sense of a performance of folk singing. It's said that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz.]

-Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org)

  "The yearly high-end hootenanny brings 22 singers to the stage of Place des Arts, each eager to show you what he or she is made of."
   A Selection of Today's Events; The Gazette (Montreal, Canada); Dec 3, 2006.


Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/hootenanny.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/hootenanny.ram

Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/hootenanny.html


Hootenanny was used in the early Twentieth Century to refer to things whose names were forgotten or unknown. In this usage it was synonymous with thingamajig or whatchamacallit, as in "hand me that hootenanny." Hootenanny was also an old country word for "party". According to Pete Seeger in various interviews, he first heard the word hootenanny in Seattle, Washington in the late 1940s. It was used by Hugh Delacey's New Deal political club to describe their monthly music fundraisers. After some debate the club voted in the word hootenanny, which narrowly beat out the word wingding. Seeger and Woody Guthrie later used the word in New York City to describe their weekly rent parties, which featured many notable folksingers of the time. Joan Baez made the analogy that a hootenanny is to folk singing what a jam session is to jazz. [...]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hootenanny

[...] More important, however, is the fact that when "hootenanny" first appeared in the early 20th century, it had nothing to do with folk singing. It was originally used as a synonym of "gadget" or "thingamajig," a term for a small, inconsequential object or tool, used when the proper name of the, um, dingus is unknown or forgotten. Unfortunately, the origin of "hootenanny" is unknown. It may have been invented out of thin air as a "silly word," or it may, in some sense, be related to the sense of "hoot" meaning "the smallest amount" (found in the phrase "don't give a hoot"), which would fit with the original "small thingy" sense of "hootenanny." [...]

http://www.word-detective.com/042805.html


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